I go to youtube to find projects. There are many videos reviewing different boards that are quite similar to the Raspberry pi. And they are calling it or asking if the board they are reviewing is the "Raspberry Pi Killer". Now what upsets me is that many people through the comments are agreeing. They forget or are not aware of the purpose of the wonderful device. The creators of the Pi's intention is to grab the children's, young kid's attention in Computer Science or at least in programming. Their interested are shifted towards other boards where they could play video games with no lag, watch high definition movies, or any sort of entertainment. It is saying to forget education. The entertainment should be in the projects where many could get together or alone and have fun with it. Another comment that upsets me is the Raspberry Pi is not powerful enough. We can not satisfy all their needs with one single device. The purpose of the Pi should be emphasised by a strong community in an amiable way. Stop calling other boards "The Raspberry Pi Killer"!!!!

Last edited by alxprogramz on Mon Jul 03, 2017 7:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

jamesh wrote:The Pi may not be the fastest SBC out there, but it is by far the best supported and the biggest seller. By probably a factor of 1000! Sales now in the 13M I believe, probably more.

IBM became the biggest computer company in the world and never produced anything resembling the fastest or best computer on the market, and--yes--having solid software and support is how they did it.

The last time I looked at available numbers, there was one competing SBC line that was running consistently at about 5% of Pi sales. That may have slipped as Pi sales have accelerated, but at least in that one case, a factor of 1000 is sheer hyperbole.

I love the Pi and use them wherever they fit what I'm doing. On the other hand, I do tell people that if (a) some other board meets their needs better, (b) they're good enough with the systems end of Linux, and (c) can live with little or no vendor or community support, then use the other board. I find it interesting to read the remarks of the more experienced (and expert) posters here about using other boards.

As it now stands, the Pi3 (in the form of the CM3L) has *almost* all the features it needs for me to be fully happy with it in my most demanding SBC ongoing project. I have some hopes that the Pi4 will take care of the last bit where the CM3L is barely adequate. (That said, I am in the midst replacing a couple of non-Pi SBCs with CM3L systems, even though the other boards do have properites that cover the one remaining shortfall of the Pi.)

A decent example of an early “Raspberry Pi Killer” that wasn't was the Via APC. Via's a big company, and also reasonably well-known in the small-format and embedded market. But: little support, tiny community. Result is that with lots of work you can run a 2.6 (!) kernel and ancient unpatched Debian subset on the thing. It's a pretty red board, but it's so much landfill now.

(I have an APC that I picked up for free. I've never found the urge to get it going.)

‘Remember the Golden Rule of Selling: “Do not resort to violence.”’ — McGlashan.

"Raspberry Pi Killer" is probably one of the most generic promotion phrases for any single board computer right now. It's impossible to market a new single board computer without bringing up the Raspberry Pi because its dominance has earned synonymity in the public mind with SBCs like Google has with search engines.

I'm happy for the Foundation for succeeding to this degree. I think their move to focus on software support and opening up their graphics is not only smart but admirable, particularly given that most other SBCs seem to be relying on the notoriously closed off ARM Mali GPUs, of which their vendor ARM Holdings have squashed any open source driver efforts.

I think they're putting effort to try to further improve the desktop experience; to really leverage the GPU of the Raspberry Pi - even for the Zero and One series. In my experience you don't often see large scale efforts to better support older consumer hardware. I think it's really remarkable because if the improvement in performance is good enough, then maybe we'll see an adequate $5 productivity computer on the horizon - a direct example of software changing the world for the better.

I use either Raspberry Pi zero or Arduino projects whichever one suits. Most of the stuff I do doesn't need cores, multi-million instructions per second or high IO. Even a Pi2 or 3 is too much for most jobs.

levelcrow wrote:"Raspberry Pi Killer" is probably one of the most generic promotion phrases for any single board computer right now. It's impossible to market a new single board computer without bringing up the Raspberry Pi because its dominance has earned synonymity in the public mind with SBCs like Google has with search engines.

I'm happy for the Foundation for succeeding to this degree. I think their move to focus on software support and opening up their graphics is not only smart but admirable, particularly given that most other SBCs seem to be relying on the notoriously closed off ARM Mali GPUs, of which their vendor ARM Holdings have squashed any open source driver efforts.

One of the really odd effects of the dominance in the field that the RPF has achieved is that, for over 4 years now, nearly every new SBC that comes along has a claim to have a 40-pin GPIO header that is compatible (or "nearly" so) with the Pi. the RPF has created a de facto standard that would probably persist if the RPF went *poof!* tomorrow. The other noticeable thing the RPF achieved in the marketplace is to cause a sharp drop in what people consider a "reasonable" price for a hobbyist-grade SBC.

The only real Raspberry PI Killer's going to be a Pi4 with something like the BCM7268 SoC fielded- which is going to have to wait a smidge for Eric to get the VC5 (Yes, apparently the rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated... Eric's got a rough-cut for the 7268 out... ) work finished at the least. Oh, and there's a chance if this is where the RPF is going, that there's going to be Vulkan support out for the SoC/GPU...as it's intimated that this was a possibility since it does just enough to DO Vulkan right as an accelerator API.

The fun thing that would come of a Pi4 with that SoC or one in it's family? GigE, USB2 and USB3 root-hubs. A few more gems like it. It might carry a bit of a higher price-point, though- I don't think this SoC's as cheap as the one in the 3. I'm just eagerly awaiting where this goes- because today's announcement by Eric Anholt gave some possible future for things...

S0litaire wrote:My general "Rule of thumb" with "kickstarter credit-card soc's"
Unless it costs LESS than, is MORE powerful than, and has a large maker/coder/enthusiast base;
It's Not going to be a "R-Pi killer" ...

Yep. There's boards that are possible Competitors that might bring something to the table that the Pi3 doesn't that justifies their price (e.g. the Pine64 Rock64 board with 4GiB of RAM, eMMC, etc...), but it's not precisely a "Pi Killer..".

madscientist42 wrote:The only real Raspberry PI Killer's going to be a Pi4 with something like the BCM7268 SoC fielded- which is going to have to wait a smidge for Eric to get the VC5 (Yes, apparently the rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated... Eric's got a rough-cut for the 7268 out... ) work finished at the least. Oh, and there's a chance if this is where the RPF is going, that there's going to be Vulkan support out for the SoC/GPU...as it's intimated that this was a possibility since it does just enough to DO Vulkan right as an accelerator API.

The fun thing that would come of a Pi4 with that SoC or one in it's family? GigE, USB2 and USB3 root-hubs. A few more gems like it. It might carry a bit of a higher price-point, though- I don't think this SoC's as cheap as the one in the 3. I'm just eagerly awaiting where this goes- because today's announcement by Eric Anholt gave some possible future for things...

jamesh wrote:
The BCM7268 is a set top box chip. Which means it lacks a lot of the peripherals required for any future Pi.

The BCM2835 was used in the Roku 2 set top box. In that sense, *all* existing Pis are using set top box chips. Therefore, I don't see that intended use to bar it being used in a "Pi4". Indeed, if it goes into *enough* set top boxes, that will provide the volume to amortize the development costs and drive the price down for use in a Pi.

As I've noted many times before...the only upgrade I really care about is faster I/O, which is most likely to be USB3 if we get it at all in this iteration. Other features, improved graphics/video, more addressable memory, faster Ethernet, more MIPS/MFLOPS, etc. all fall into the "nice to have" category, so far as I am concerned. YMMV.

jamesh wrote:
The BCM7268 is a set top box chip. Which means it lacks a lot of the peripherals required for any future Pi.

The BCM2835 was used in the Roku 2 set top box. In that sense, *all* existing Pis are using set top box chips.

No, a set top box manufacturer saw an opportunity using a mobile phone chip.
Bcm2763 and bcm2835 are repackaged versions of the same silicon. 2763 was the main design, and intended for mobiles. It shipped in various Nokia Symbian devices (though smaller numbers than predicted due to Elop).

There is a separate division at Broadcom that make set top box chips, and that is still going. The same can't be said for the mobile multimedia division.